“It wasn’t necessary for you to know. If you had cared—enough—you would have kept on writing.”
He had to admit to himself that there was just enough truth in what she said to make her logic unanswerable. His delight in her presence now did not alter the fact that he had found it quite possible to live for four years without her, and it was true that upon one or two great vital moments his mind had leapt, not to Phyllis Bruce, but to Zen Transley! He blushed at the recollection; it was an impossible situation, but it was true!
He was framing some plausible argument about honorable men not persisting in a correspondence when Murdoch bustled in again.
“Mother is going to set the dining-room table,” he announced, “and the coffee will be ready presently. Well, sir, you do look well in uniform. You will be wondering how the business has gone?”
“Not half as much as I am wondering some other things,” he said, with a significance intended for the ear of Phyllis. “You see—I was just talking it over with a pal to-day, a very good comrade whom I used to know in the West, and who pulled me out of No Man’s Land where I would have been lying yet if he hadn’t thought more of me than he did of himself—I was talking it over with him to-day, and we agreed that business isn’t worth the effort. Fancy sitting behind a desk, wondering about the stock market, when you’ve been accustomed to leaning up against a parapet wondering where the next shell is going to burst! If that is not from the sublime to the ridiculous, it is at least from the vital to the inconsequential. You can’t expect men to take a jump like that.”
“No, not as a jump,” Murdoch agreed. “They’ll have to move down gradually. But they must remember that life depends quite as much on wheat-fields as it does on trenches, and that all the machinery of commerce and industry is as vital in its way as is the machinery of war. They must remember that, or instead of being at the end of our troubles we will find ourselves at the beginning.”
“I suppose,” Grant conceded, “but it all seems so unnecessary. No doubt you have been piling up more money to be a problem to my conscience.”
“Your peculiar conscience, I might almost correct, sir. Your responsibilities do seem to insist upon increasing. Following your instructions I put the liquid assets into Government bonds. Interest, even on Government bonds, has a way of working while you sleep. Then, you may remember, we were carrying a large load of certain steel stocks. These I did not dispose of at once, with the result that they, in themselves, have made you a comfortable fortune.”
“I suppose I should thank you for your foresight, Murdoch. I was rather hoping you would lose my money and so relieve me of an embarrassing situation. What am I to do with it?”
“I don’t know, sir, but I feel sure you will use it for some good purpose. I was glad to get as much of it together for you as I did, because otherwise it might have fallen to people who would have wasted it.”